ly marriage, with many plans for readjustments in case
he had done so.

Through Barney, who still clung to many of his North Carolina
associates, Katrine had news of Frank's return to Ravenel immediately
after the Van Rensselaer visit, and of a sudden journey to France
following close upon the heels of his return.

Early in November--it was the afternoon of the first snowfall--delayed
letters came from Josef containing the St. Petersburg contracts for her
signature. She was to have her premiere in May, and Josef wrote that he
would go up from Paris with her.

This arrangement was widely published at the time in London and Paris,
so that the claim afterward made that Katrine's Metropolitan engagement
was cancelled because of her divine forgetfulness the night she was to
sing for Melba can be proven utterly untrue.

In the mail containing the contracts came other letters, the most
important being one from Dermott, stating as an incident that her debt
to Frank had been cancelled, and as a matter of pronounced importance
that he was wearing a new green tie. He ended by saying that he would
give an account of his stewardship on January 1st, and that he hoped he
had done his duty to her and his dearly remembered cousin. He wrote no
word of Ravenel, neither of developments nor compromises, and Katrine
concluded not unnaturally that the matter had been allowed to rest.

But she reckoned without two important persons in this conclusion. The
first was McDermott, who, as he put it, "wasn't going to betray a trust
because a girl flouted him a bit"; and the second, Ravenel himself, who
was showing a fine honor and great courage in the quiet, unflagging
search he was making for the truth.

She saw McDermott but twice during this time, though he sent almost
daily messages or tokens of his remembrance. During his first visit he
mentioned, casually, however, the disturbed condition of Wall Street,
and that he was watching the money situation day and night with little
time for visiting.

His second coming was a fortnight later. In the afternoon Katrine had
been reading by the fire an old Italian tale of love and death. It
seemed hardly an epoch-making experience in her life, and yet there had
come to her, like the letting in of sudden light, the knowledge that
love was beyond and above reason, as religion is, as life itself, of
which love is the cause. She had worked to forget, had been taught how
to forget, yet she knew she had